100 Responses to “Shiner”

My mom was rather perturbed with my dad the time I bumped into our mini Weber-style grill! I was four or so, and ended up with a second-degree burn on my leg! The only photos-while-injured incidents involving me started at the end of high school. My senior year, I dislocated my elbow after falling off a (crow hopping!) horse. I had a splint and bandage on my arm for a week-and there were some yearbook photos going on at school. Fortunately, it was December, so the sweatshirts covered it. I held my arms behind my back and didn’t wear the sling for the photos. In college, however, I had dislocated a kneecap and was wearing a leg brace during family weekend…(even one photo of that was too many.)

I’d have put a bandaid on the goose egg at the very least… and a good thick concealer would at least take attention from the eye bruising… ah well, lessons for Elisabeth to take in hand if and when her own darling decides to rough house the day before a photo appointment.

When I was a kid I was playing with a stick and somehow ended up poking myself in the eye with it. The eye turned black and swelled shut for weeks, during which time school photos were being done.

My school photo that year featured me looking like Rocky Balboa, and my mother cried whenever she saw it. I thought it was hilarious then and still do. Come to think of it, I should scan that photo and post it up here!!

I dabble in photography and love when parents are willing to capture the true moment. I think perfect is boring!

Live a little people! You’re children aren’t perfect and neither are you. If you have an appointment keep it! You will capture the true memory of that time, because some day you’re going to miss the bumps and bruises and kisses.

I agree! This photo is more interesting than the perfect, matchy matchy photos. I have one school photo where everything is perfect (hair, shirt, face) and I look back at it in amazement. I was never that prissy little girl. I usally had a band-aid on some where from falling off my bike or jumping a ditch and several black eyes!

My daughter rode her tricycle into a wooden paling fence three days before her Baptism ceremony – gave herself two black eyes and swollen nose – that was a good look to present to the Catholic Priest! She did look sweet in her outfit though, complete with shiners.

Same thing happened to me when I was nine. I got 10 stitches in my forehead and still have a scar. The wall had two corners, the one I turned and then a second corner, kind of like an anti-corner or indent on the building. Whoever designed that building probably never caught a little girl before. The boy who was chasing me laughed at me for a month after, the little creep.

When I was about her age I got hit in the head with a rock. I ended up with a pretty big goose egg – when the swelling subsided I got the black eyes to match with a bruised noggin. I think the fluid draining from the lump kind of settled there. It happens – I can attest!

My mom did the exact same thing to me when I was three. Side pony tail and all. Except instead of an injury I had decided to give my bangs a hair cut the day before and chopped most of them off. She tried to cut some more over it but it was a disaster. I’ll never show them to AFP ever!!!!! EVARRRRR!

There’s no way I’d take my daugter into a portrait studio with those shiners. Those studio pictures aren’t cheap, so why pay for something you could never hang on your wall. PLEASE tell me they didn’t hang this on their wall. Child protective services would have shown up to investigate the black eyes… seen that portrait on the wall and deemed them unfit parents on the spot. Hanging that on the wall is more cruel that the face punch lol

Then again, they could hang it on the wall she ran into. You know, as a warning to anyone else who thinks it’s fun to run around in the house after mom has told you a milion times to knock it off or you’ll get hurt! So stop running inside!

Lighten up. Child protective services realize kids walk into doors and walls and they fall down. This is an awesome “day in the life” photo that they will laugh about for a long time. No different than taking studio portraits when one kids is screaming. Of course they hung it on the wall and they probably sent it in their Christmas cards.

Sitting alone contently at the table and sipping her Chateau LaTour Elizabeth reflected on her on success. Those long hours working her way through college at the Walmart photo studio. How her wealth and community standing could now allow her to buy and sell her brothers at will. Yet she was lonesome…she wanted to return to her roots of tacky family photgraphy but didn’t know how. Suddenly her gaze was drawn across the room to young entrepreneur and former high school photograpy club President, Olin. Their eyes met. His pose was akward but strangely attractive. In distance a dog barked……..

It’s a great photo and the backstory you are filling in for us adds to the fun. but please lay off the CAPSLOCK button. Please. I mean, think of the children … and the corner walls … and the poor WalMart photographers … and all the other innocents who may be reading these posts.

Many kids play hard and could easily run full steam ahead into walls,corners or doors. Do you seriously think if her bruising was due to abuse of some sort they would have sent it in? Lighten up, if every kid with a bruise on their face got reported, all parents would live in fear of DHS.

Not makeup, but beefsteak. This happened almost sixty years ago, but when I was this girl’s age, I ran into an open barn door on my grandfather’s farm, and my black eye looked worst than hers. And the suggestion was that I put a raw beefsteak on it to take down the swelling. I did not. If I had, maybe my black eye would not have been noticable two weeks later. That same day that I got my black eye, my sister, who is younger than me, had to be extracted from the barbwire fence that surrounded my grandfather’s farm. That’s right. She wasn’t watching where she was going neither and ran into fence. I think she came out worst than I did.

I’m sure it was for her, but we both survivied our run-ins with the open barn door and the barbed wire fence. But, to make the story even more awkward, after visiting my mother’s parents’ farm, we had to visit my father’s relatives. Of course, my black eye was still noticable. Thus the question was what happened. As my father was in the U.S. Navy at that time, I said I had gotten into a fight with a sailor, and this was the result. Of course, totally non-credible story, but much better than confessing how careless I was not to watch where I was going.

Agreed! I don’t want any pictures of my kids banged up like that. My son broke his nose last year right before his birthday. Consequently we took no pictures of him for that birthday. (We did however get a very cute picture of his and his little brother’s feet. )

So…. You would rather have no photos from his birthday only because he was a little banged up? What is so wrong with that? Now you’ll have nothing to look back on to remember the birthday nor the nose breaking.

Oh good grief! If I had waited to take pictures until a time when either of my 2 sons (and sometimes my 2 daughters, for that matter) had no bruises or marks on them, I would never have had any photos taken of them. In this house, pictures were scheduled 2-3x a year and they were taken no matter what. So I have black-eyed kids, banged up headed kids, kids in casts (including one of my poor daughter’s who spent her first 6 months in a Spica cast from armpit to toes due to being born with dislocated hips), kids with stitches, kids with scratches on their faces, etc. As the old Kodak commercial said, “Do you remember the times of your life?” I wanted to remember my kids as they were, not how I wanted to pretend they were.